Third Level Insanity? Why the university craze may be a mistake

Cork is a university city, whether you like it or not. Whether it is University College Cork, or its slightly less glamorous cousin, the Cork Institute of Technology, both have left an indelible mark on the city. The UCC quadrangle is one of the must-see sights in Cork, while the Lewis Glucksman Gallery is one of the premiere venues for contemporary art in a country that often seems bereft of art in general, but that is a topic for another day. Students are seemingly everywhere, my bus to work in the morning seems to be full of them, and student apartment complexes dot the cityscape. With a student count in the five-digit range for both colleges, the economic impact on the city cannot be denied. And that footprint is likely to increase as more and more people opt to go for a college degree.

UCC has become an integral part of the city. From its historic Quadrangle... 

to the brutalist elegance of the Boole Library, the city just wouldn't be the same without it.

But is that worth it? Is a college degree actually worth getting? Or is it just another passing fad in an increasingly schizophrenic labour market? Well, if you look at any job site of your choosing, you’ll find that almost any job that is not an entry level role will either require a third level degree, or at least will state that it is advantageous. So from that perspective, the answer is pretty clear. Thanks for reading this article, make sure to like and share, and see you next time.

Wait, wait, wait, get back here. Now! As usual, the simple answer is also the incorrect one in this case. While the above answer may seem correct on the surface, things begin looking very differently once you dig a little deeper. Many of the jobs that seemingly require a third level degree do so because they require knowledge of a particular set of tools, or certain processes and principles, and not necessarily due to the complexity of the subject matter at hand. Most importantly though, a lot of these skills can be learned outside the confines of a college course. Websites such as Skillshare or udemy offer a plethora of courses in almost every field at only a fraction of the cost of a bachelors or masters degree. What’s more, many of the jobs that seemingly require a college degree here in Ireland can be accessed with a vocational training scheme or apprenticeship in places like Germany for example. So, unless you’re going for a legal role, or want to head into academic research, there are really no effective reasons as to why a college degree should be necessary.

Then why do so many companies seemingly demand one? Well, there are two reasons for it. One is simply to give HR another reason to exist. Checking whether a degree is valid is simply another box ticking exercise for HR, and a reason to hang on to every bit of head count allocation they can get. The other reason could be described as a bit more sinister, depending on your point of view. It is an extra filter to weed out joke applications and candidates that lack the desirable characteristics that a company is looking for. Even when a role does not strictly require a college degree, many hiring managers will stick the requirement on there just to filter out a section of potential candidates that is so ill-qualified that they’d just clog up the system, at least from the employers’ point of view. 

So, rather than being reflective of a change in intellectual requirements, the surge of jobs requiring a third level degree has simply managed to create a false economy. More and more people are forced to study for a degree simply to get a job that likely a few years ago wouldn’t have required one, and where they’ll likely only use a fraction of what they’re actually being taught at university. Of course, universities adapt to this by offering more courses and places in those areas where they can see a high demand and adapt their courses to better cater to these extra students. However, in order to ensure that the filter function of a third-level requirement remains viable, companies will sooner or later adapt their job requirements, and demand higher-level degrees, creating a vicious circle that will lead to otherwise highly qualified candidates being locked out of the labour market, even for more and more mundane positions.

Then, there are the secondary effects, which can be potentially even more damaging. The first one is the continuing shift in university course capacity towards these in -demand courses. Colleges inevitably have finite resources, and continued investment into their business school will ultimately draw resources away from other areas, including those that would seem more in tune with a college or university. This means that, even if there is an upsurge in interest for example in physics degrees, a university might find itself unable to properly cater for these since they’ve invested most of their resources in business-related fields. Unfortunately, such a shift will inevitably affect the ability of a college or university to provide a centre for actual learning and research, and they risk morphing into pure degree mills.

While art galleries like the Lewis Glucksman Gallery are certainly a major bonus to the city,

Additionally, a continuing shift towards degrees and fields of study demanded by the economy risks salting the Earth for those students that are actually studying in a field that interests them, rather than simply doing it for the job prospects. This is particularly true here in Ireland a country that regularly parades its Nobel laureates around like sacred relics only to hide a vicious anti-intellectual streak. Anyone who dares to go for a degree in a field that interests them is immediately decried as a waster, a chancer, a parasite, or other similarly charitable terms, often by those who couldn’t even read the direction signs on a university campus without the help of a translator. It doesn’t matter what field the people are studying in, by the way. I’ve seen the same type of vitriol directed against nuclear physics, history, or English Literature students.

The students trying to display their work there or here at the Crawford are often vilified and disparaged at every turn. This type of anti-intellectual rage is much more sinister and dangerous than it may seem.

This latter part is particularly worrisome. As a global civilisation, we’ve reached a level in our understanding of nature where further insights are all but impossible without at least a sizeable supercomputer, preferably with a few particle accelerators thrown in for good measure. Granted, any twelve year old girl with a backyard telescope can still stumble across a supernova in its early stages, or catch a light flash associated by a neutron star merger, but we’ve long since passed the stage where a smart man in a study could revolutionise our understanding of the cosmos with just a pen, a piece of paper, and an abacus. As such, it is vital that universities, as our prime centres of basic research, retain a significant capability in that area. Simply bowing to the whims of the national, or even global economy at the expense of research will ultimately lead to a phase of technological stagnation, and I’m not sure we’re in a position where we can afford this.